


the only one who ever sticks around

by PetrichorIllusions



Category: Kaleidotrope (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Loneliness, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-28 21:16:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21398785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PetrichorIllusions/pseuds/PetrichorIllusions
Summary: “Sounds like your boyfriend is being pretty shitty.”Drew and Harrison move to London when Drew gets a new job. It doesn't go well.But they'll fix it. Won't they?
Relationships: Drew/Harrison (Kaleidotrope)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 57





	the only one who ever sticks around

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Silence, by Boston the Girl.
> 
> Thanks to Lee for the prompt for this!

Drew’s been crying. 

Harrison waits to see if he’ll say anything, but Drew is acting as if nothing’s wrong. Well, as much as he can when he’s clearly trying to angle his face away, clearly trying not to let Harrison see. And Harrison - Harrison doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t want to push it, doesn’t want it to devolve into yet another fight. He doesn’t want to say nothing either, but then he doesn’t say anything, and doesn’t say anything, and then it’s too late, and he can’t. 

He’ll cry in the shower later, thinking about it, but he won’t let Drew know that either. Maybe they just need to deal with their own shit before they start trying to help each other. Maybe that’s what it is. If he thinks it hard enough, maybe he’ll believe that that’s the cause of their last few weeks in misery.

Drew hears what’s probably a sob echo out of the shower, and lets his head drop into his hands. He should do something, he knows - and yet. And yet Harrison had come in and seen him crying, and not done anything. Drew knows he saw, knows he realised. He’d seen Harrison’s eyes widen as he turned away. And then he’d ignored it. Drew had been waiting for him to ask, waiting for him to at least come over, but he’d just - left. Gone upstairs with barely another word. 

The rational part of Drew tells him Harrison was probably trying to give him space. The part of Drew that’s hurt by it is overruling that, filling him with anger instead. He’s spoiling for a fight by the time Harrison gets back downstairs, and he knows - he _ knows _ \- he should get out of here, should stop this in its tracks. 

He doesn’t. 

The fight is stupid, and not pretty, and really about nothing at all. Harrison storms off to their bedroom before they get anywhere, and Drew prepares himself for a night spent on the sofa. Normally they fix things before then. Tonight, it doesn’t feel like that’s going to happen. 

He falls into a doze long before he means to, curled up as small as possible. He wakes, not too long later, with a blanket thrown over him, and he pulls it up to hide his face in. The blanket feels like the most of Harrison he’s had in weeks. 

He comes back into wakefulness slowly, and then with a jolt he realises Harrison is sat on the other end of the couch, watching him. 

“What happened to us, Drew?” Harrison asks, as quiet as the room is dark around them. 

Drew shakes his head, because he’s asked himself the same question so many times even just today. 

“I miss you,” He offers up instead, speaking to his knees, an admission he didn’t mean to make. “I know it’s - it’s stupid; you’re right there, but — I miss you.” 

The silence settles back around them before Harrison whispers back.

“I miss you too.” 

“What do we do?” Drew asks him, hoarse. 

It’s Harrison’s turn to shrug helplessly. There’s no trope around this, no how-to guides in the movies to fix the breakdown before it leads to the end. 

“I guess we should - talk about it, probably,” Harrison says haltingly. “But I don’t - I don’t _ know_,”

Drew doesn’t say anything. 

“I’m _ scared_, Drew. I’m _ scared _ for us.”

Drew knows the next line, knows he’s supposed to ask what he’s scared of. 

But he doesn’t want to hear it out loud. 

Harrison gives him a few minutes before he huffs in frustration. 

“I think we’ve established that pretending it isn’t happening won’t fix it.” 

“Oh, I’m the one pretending that—” he cuts himself off, suddenly, and deflates. “Sorry,” he whispers. “Sorry. You’re- not wrong.” Harrison bristles at that, but he forces himself to let it go, to unclench his jaw. He waits, instead, for Drew to say something more. But it’s as it’s been for the last few weeks: Drew won’t address it, and Harrison doesn’t understand why. 

Finally, finally, a way forward hits Harrison. 

“Advice quarter hour.” He says, standing up. 

“What?”

“Advice quarter hour,” He says again, fetching his phone from the counter. Drew blinks at him, but Harrison tapping away at his phone. He looks at Drew before he presses send, and it isn’t until Drew’s phone pings that he finally understands.

“Really?” He asks. 

“Humour me.”

“Harrison-“

“Please, Drew. Let's just - try this, please.”

Drew holds his eye for the longest he has in days, and Harrison stares back, not budging. Eventually Drew gives in, and looks back down at his phone. 

“Dear Drew,” he reads. “Me and my boyfriend are barely speaking any more, and I miss him. I’ve tried to talk to him but he doesn’t seem to want to talk about it and we keep derailing into arguments. I know he’s busy with his new job, and I’m still trying to adjust to a new country and a new school, but I want to fix things. I can’t imagine doing this without him. How do I get through to him when he’s already acting like this is the beginning of the end?” There’s so much sadness in Drew’s gaze as he looks at Harrison. 

“What are you going to tell the listeners, Drew?” He prompts, trying to ignore the shakiness in his voice.

“_Harrison.” _

Harrison doesn’t reply, just looks back at him, trying to nudge back the little swig of hope that keeps trying to rise up in him. 

Drew takes a deep breath, and closes his eyes. When he speaks, he addresses the empty air in front of them. 

“Sounds like your boyfriend is being pretty shitty.”

Harrison says his name, but Drew cuts over him. 

“Sounds like your boyfriend is letting his fear paralyse him, and he’s making you feel like you’ve done something wrong when you haven’t.” Harrison makes another noise, well aware that Drew hasn’t been the only problem here; that his own actions won’t hold up to any good reasoning either.

Drew grits his teeth, and Harrison can see the tension in his body. But there are words building in Drew, and Harrison knows enough to know what that looks like now. He waits, scarcely daring to breathe. 

“Maybe your boyfriend thinks the fact that neither of you are happy is his fault, because he convinced you both to move over here for a job that has turned out to be _ shit,_ and you’re obviously struggling here and missing home, and maybe he thinks that he was the one who spent hours persuading you that this was a good idea. So maybe he’s wrong about everything and doesn’t deserve to make any more decisions, and maybe he’s waiting for you to realise that so you can make that decision for yourself instead of him _ fucking it up again_.”

Harrison says his name, moving across the sofa to him. He reaches out a hand to Drew’s shoulder, but he flinches away. 

“Harrison—” he turns to him, finally. “If… if moving here wasn’t the right decision, if you want to - if you want to go, then I don’t want you to feel like you have to stay because of me.”

Harrison stares at him in shock, parsing through everything he’s said. 

“Do you-“ he stops, bites his lip. “Do you want me to go?”

“What? _ No!_ No. But Harrison, I want you to be happy, and it doesn’t seem like you’re happy here. It doesn’t seem like you’re happy here with me.”

“So, what, you were just going to- ignore me until I decided if I was happy or not?”

Drew winces. 

“I didn’t want to, to influence you. There are more things here than just me. I didn’t mean to make you feel like I was ignoring you.”

“God,” Harrison says, blinking up at the ceiling to try and hold back the tears. “For god's sake, that is the stupidest thing you’ve ever said to me,” he tells Drew, and when his voice cracks, he lets the hope bloom through it. 

“Did you think I just blindly followed you here, Drew? Did you think you hypnotised me, and I never once stopped to think if it was the right decision for me?”

Drew goes to speak, but Harrison laughs, and moves close enough to press a kiss, hard, to the side of his temple. 

“Check your goddamn ego,” he tells Drew, and laughs again, and this time Drew is helpless but to join in. 

“I love you,” He continues, “as a choice. I moved here as a choice, because this is a good school and I don’t have to worry about them trying to expel me if I write an entire dissertation on their fucked-up marketing ethics, and also, because I knew you would be here, and that I wouldn’t be alone.”

“But-“ Drew begins, and Harrison raises an eyebrow. 

“Do you think I was happy right away at Sidlesmith?” He asks Drew. “Do you think I’d have been happy right away if we’d moved to Florida, or Missouri, or, or, Kuala Lumpur?”

“I assumed you were pretty happy right away at Sidlesmith,” Drew says, the beginnings of a smile in his voice. 

“Maybe,” Harrison allows, “But it was never Sidlesmith that made me the most happy I’ve ever been.”

Drew looks up at him, and lets Harrison thumb away the tear that drips down his cheek. He keeps his hand there, cradling his face. 

“Thank you for looking out for my happiness.” He tells him. “But you need to trust me, okay?”

“I do trust-“

“That’s not what I meant,” Harrison says soothingly. “I know you trust _ me _ , but you also need to trust my decisions, and that you’re not manipulating me into anything, and that you can _ tell me, _if you think you are, if you’re worried you are.”

Drew sighs, leaning his head into Harrison’s hand. 

“I’m sure I used to be better at this,” He says, and Harrison understands what he means. They’ve been through iterations of this discussion before, not so long after they’d started dating, and they had thought they’d learned from it, had thought they’d moved on. 

“You moved across a country to somewhere without any friends too,” Harrison reminds him. Drew nods, finally, and tilts his head to kiss Harrison’s palm. 

“So what do we do now?” He asks. Harrison smiles. 

“Now, we go to bed. And you’re going to get a good night's sleep for the first time in a while, and then when you come back from work tomorrow we’re going to make a list of things we want to do to make us feel more at home here, and _ then _ we’re going to choose to do them.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“Maybe it is that simple.”

Drew begins to shake underneath Harrison’s fingers, and Harrison pulls him in. Drew pushes his face into Harrison’s chest, as if he could hide the sobs that are suddenly wracking his body. Harrison holds him tighter, and lets his own tears start to fall too. 

“We’re okay, Drew,” he whispers into his hair. “We’re going to be okay.”

And they will be. They’ll move to their bed, eventually, and fall asleep in a tangle of limbs. Drew will wake up first, as usual, and he’ll kiss the corner of Harrison’s mouth on his way out. And then he’ll come back, and they’ll talk -- finally, eventually -- and they’ll learn, and decide. And then they’ll choose each other, and choose each other, and choose each other, until there’s not even a semblance of doubt that either of them could be anything else but enormously, stupidly, gloriously _ happy_.


End file.
